


Just Math

by Hokuto



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Conversations, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-22 23:17:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13774686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: They caught him, years later, on an agricultural colony that had been suffering from an outbreak of pirates.





	Just Math

**Author's Note:**

> Because on one hand I badly want Locus to become the most reluctant Red or at least be that guy who shows up once a season or so to grumpily help everybody, but on the other hand - he really deserves one million years dungeon. _Why have you cursed me with these feelings, RT_. I NEVER ASKED FOR THIS.
> 
> This one is a bit difficult to tag, so a couple of further content notes: Discussion of guilt/punishment and war crimes, background Grey/Kimball, season 15 spoilers.

They caught him, years later, on an agricultural colony that had been suffering from an outbreak of pirates. He didn't resist. The IPD team that brought him in couldn't stop marveling at it, after: _They never go that quietly. Not guys like him_ , and one foolhardy soul, _Unless they didn't do it. Sometimes. You think we maybe got the wrong one? Or that he could be -_

 _No_ , said the team leader, rubbing the groove of an old, ugly scar on the side of his neck, and they dropped it.

* * *

She'd been singing all the way down in an effort to keep herself in the right mood and still had to knock on the cell door to get his attention. Really, he'd gotten very sloppy! No wonder he'd been captured so easily. At least the knocking worked - she hadn't been entirely sure what she would try next if it hadn't, although throwing something at him had sounded tempting - and he raised his head to stare at her.

"I wasn't expecting you," Locus said.

Emily gave him her _very_ best smile, the one that always made the nurses run faster for some reason, and said, "Oh, dear, I hope you didn't think you'd get Vanessa herself! Being president keeps her extremely busy, you know. There's still always so much to do around here - even I barely managed to squeeze in this little visit, and things have actually been slower at the hospital lately. Also, I strongly advised her against it. Violent traumatic flashbacks are just so _boring_ after the thousandth one or so, and when they're happening to your wife - well, that takes any remaining fun out of them."

He looked away from her again. "Why are you here?"

"Oh, you know me! I just can't resist a nice bit of psychoanalysis." She had been trying to convince herself for years that there couldn't be anything that interesting about Locus's psyche. Untreated PTSD and internalized depersonalization issues, possibly some sort of survivor's guilt warped into a self-defensive superiority complex, blah blah blah, who cared after everything he'd done? She could study hundreds of cases just like him but without the mass murder right there on Chorus. And she had. So there! Suck it, curiosity!

Still, none of her arguments had ever entirely sunk in.

He looked absolutely dreadful, sitting there on the cell's narrow bed: dull eyes, white threads in unbrushed hair, even a few wrinkles. She had seen him without his helmet once before, briefly, when he had still been playing the part of the Federal Army's mad dog, and frankly, she hadn't been impressed. Moderate scarring, otherwise an unexceptional face with everything where it was supposed to be; why he'd made such a big fuss over anyone seeing it she didn't understand. Excessive vanity had been her first hypothesis, but General Doyle had forbidden her from pestering Locus about "personal matters," even in the name of science. Spoilsport.

Anyway, as he clearly wasn't interested in holding up his half of the conversation, she said, "Okay, I'm also just dying to know a few things! According to the Reds and Blues, you were going to 'make it right' and they would 'never find you,' or something totally cliché like that. But here you are! What changed?"

"I don't know."

"Really? That seems very unlikely to me."

"It wasn't enough," he said, eyes on the floor.

"What wasn't?"

"Anything. Everything."

"And it has been some time, hasn't it? I'm sure you've had _lots_ of opportunities to save lives and help people. Tons of them! Were you counting?"

He shook his head. That did sort of surprise her. He had always seemed so meticulous, so thorough; she had imagined him with a little ledger or datapad, his crimes drawn up on one side and his good deeds on the other, keeping track and calculating the balance until they came out even and he could tell himself that he was no longer guilty, that he had Made Things Right.

She'd told Vanessa about the idea once, trying to make her laugh - Moral Accountant Locus, hilarious, isn't it? - but Vanessa hadn't been amused at all. Emily hadn't found it that funny, either, honestly, but it was laugh or cry on Chorus, some days.

"I can't make you answer, you know," she said. "I don't have any of my favorite instruments right now, and these nice guards out here would probably stop me," although one of the nice guards was making furtive signs that, if she were interpreting them correctly, meant _Go ahead, do whatever you want_. "But, just as a little favor, would you mind telling me what actually brought you to that realization?"

Locus was silent. His hands were cuffed behind him and chained to the wall, and his ankles had been cuffed together, too. The UNSC wasn't taking any chances, clearly, and _good_.

Just as she was considering testing the guards' willingness to let her try some more - intensive questioning, he said, "There was a man."

* * *

He had been the last of the pirates' hostages.

_We are so very grateful to you, sir. Why, I just don't know how we can ever repay this debt, but if there's anything, any little thing we could do..._

No similarities in appearance, but he had sounded so much like Doyle, in pitch and accent and intonation. Uncanny. Unfortunate.

Locus had despised Donald Doyle from the first. A so-called general who had never served in combat, who stuttered or fainted at the smallest hint of violence, who dithered and delayed at every decision. Weak; frightened; soft and spineless. Worthy of nothing but contempt and eventual death when his usefulness had ended. Entirely unlike Locus, hardened and driven and dedicated to a single blood-soaked purpose.

Doyle had sacrificed himself to save the people of Chorus as Locus turned tail and fled the blast.

Doyle had been a true warrior. Locus was as he had been named by Agent Washington: a killer, a murderer, a monster. A true coward. Locus was the one who should have died in place of Doyle, in place of every other innocent soul on Chorus.

But Locus had survived, and nothing he had done since could bring back a single, worthier life.

The man who had been Locus hadn't left the colony as planned. He had lingered, neither harming nor helping the settlers as they dealt with the damage the pirates had done, merely existing, until one of them had called IPD and finally brought him to justice.

* * *

"I see," she said. "That's it? Really?"

He shrugged.

"You leave us in peace for years, but one little encounter with some random farmer who reminds you of General Doyle - whose name you aren't even fit to speak, by the way! - and you just have to come running back to 'face justice' or whatever? And we _all_ have to remember everything you did to us and tell every story all over again for a new judge and jury, instead of trying to keep moving on the way we've been doing _quite_ nicely, thank you very much?"

"I thought -"

"Did you _ever_? Have you ever really thought? About anything? What did you expect? I certainly hope it wasn't mercy or forgiveness."

"No," he said. "Never that."

"Good! Because you aren't getting it. Not here, not from us. No one here is going to stand up and defend _you_. You do know what's going to happen to you now, right?"

"Prison. Or execution."

God, she had always hated him. So fatalistic. So boring. So dead inside, and yet she'd never been able to resist picking at him for signs of life. Maybe that was why Felix had kept him around for so long. "Those are the two basic options nowadays, aren't they?" she said brightly. "People used to have so many other ways to deal with criminals, though! So many different, interesting, _creative_ ways. Have you ever studied the history of criminal punishment?"

"No."

"Haha, of course not! That's another reason I never liked you. No intellectual curiosity at all! Also the whole deceiving and betraying us for money for years thing. But especially the lack of curiosity. I just don't understand people who don't want to know everything they can!"

"And which of those punishments would you choose?"

"Well, that's the problem, isn't it? There's lots of wonderful, very painful options, but most of them are fatal. And you can only die once, after all."

His dead eyes flickered away from her again. Oh, yes, she had the measure of him. "That was the flaw in your calculations, wasn't it?" she said. "It's a rookie mistake, but lots of doctors take _forever_ to figure it out. Lives aren't a simple variable. You can't plug them in one-for-one all willy-nilly, or things will never add up right."

"I said I wasn't counting."

"If you weren't on some level, you wouldn't be here now, would you? But lives just don't work like that. You can't say that oh, I cured this tiny child's brain tumor, so it's totally okay that I ran over a hobo in the street who turned out to be a beloved street performer. Which I haven't done! It's just an example! That could happen to anyone!" She took a couple of deep breaths and ran through a bar of _Habanera_ in her head. "You can - and have! - killed lots of people, but you've only got one death to offer in return. And I've been told that Felix's death was _very_ satisfying for those who were there, but I can't say that I noticed anyone he killed coming back to life afterward, either."

His brows furrowed together in the first expression she'd seen on his face. "I don't understand where you're going with this."

"Actually, I kind of lost track a little bit, too," she said. "No, wait, now I remember! There was this very interesting message Bitters shared with me yesterday. From Captain Grif," and Locus's eyes widened. "How did it go again? Oh, yes..." She put on her best Grif impression. "'So, uh, definitely don't tell Kimball this or anything, but back with that whole weird Blues and Reds thing? Locus kind of saved all our asses and snuck Wash to the hospital so you could help him and stuff. If he hadn't shown up, Earth would probably be a smoking black hole or whatever. Just saying. Also he's never seen Battlestar Galactica and hates mushrooms, which is just sad when you think about it. P.S. We need more snack cakes.'"

"He should never have sent that," Locus said.

"He absolutely shouldn't have." Bitters was, fortunately, laconic enough that there was very little chance of him spreading the information around, and even if he did give up the secret to Matthews, Matthews would probably consider it enough of a betrayal to take it to his grave. "But he did! And I have a perfect memory, so I'll never be able to forget it. Do you happen to know what the current population of Earth is? Oh, and Luna! It would have been affected by Temple's dastardly plans, too, of course. Gravity's very effective that way."

"It's still not enough."

"Of course not, silly! Didn't I just tell you lives don't work that way?"

"Then it changes nothing," and he slumped back against the wall; whether in disappointment or relief, she couldn't tell and didn't give a damn.

"That's right! It doesn't. You're going to stand trial for every single life you took here, and probably some of the ones from before us, too, if there's enough evidence. Someone has to take their side and speak for them. They deserve justice."

He didn't disagree. _So_ boring.

"But I think there may be a few other voices speaking up," she said, leaning on the door despite the guards' hissed warnings. "The people you've saved - obviously we can't speak for them. I mean, personally, I hope most of them are as disgusted with you as we are, but at least they're around to have an opinion, so they should get to share it if they want. Because they still can. You'll get prison or execution no matter what, so giving both sides a chance to talk seems fair to me. Don't you agree?"

"It seems - cruel," he said.

"Maybe! Isn't moral philosophy fascinating that way?" Her face was starting to hurt from smiling, which meant it was past time for her to go. "It's approximately 10.3 billion people, by the way. And another 9.9 million on Luna."

"Dr. Grey -"

"I'm leaving now! I'm going to try to never, ever think about you again, okay? I have so many better things to do!"

"Understood."

"Don't care! Already gone! Hope they go with execution and your last meal has mushrooms in it!"


End file.
